Methodist circuit preachers had it rough.

Embedded in “The History of Methodism in South Carolina” are fascinating first-hand accounts of circuit pastors.

In 1790, Rev. Richardson and his horse were traveling in 8 inches of snow to his next appointment. He knew he was not going to make it and stopped at the nearest house.

The owner told him, “No, you cannot stay, you are one of these lazy Methodist preachers going about the country, who ought to be engaged in honest work.”

Richardson tried in vain to persuade the hardhearted man.

He knew if he stayed outside he would freeze. He tied his horse to a tree and sat on the porch singing hymns.

The hard-hearted man softened.

“You seem to be quite merry, and you must be cold,” he said. “Would you like to have a little fire?”

The man invited Richardson to build a fire in his yard. The preacher took firewood from the shed and created a warm haven in the snowy yard.

Eventually, the man invited him into the house.

Richardson told him he and his horse had not eaten and if he fed them, he would pay him. The man obstinately refused to supply the preacher or the horse with any food or pray for his family.

The pastor slept in his coat next to the fire. The next day, he discovered his horse had run away.

Bitter speech

Cold, tired and weak, Richardson sought his horse and came upon 2 men clearing land. He asked about his horse, and one of the men “abused him with great bitterness of speech,” hit him and threatened to kill him.

The 2nd man stepped in to save him.

After his horse was found, he had to pass the house owned by the man who had beat him. The man’s wife ran out and implored him to come inside. When Richardson refused, she insisted.

“My husband is at home, and he says for you to come in, he is anxious to see you,” she said. “There is no cause to fear.”

Richardson went in and found the man in “deepest mental distress, tears streaming down his face,” and begged him to pray for him because was a miserable, lost sinner.

Richardson prayed with him and was “powerfully converted.”

The man “sprung up with such violence that he came well nigh finishing in love the work which the day before he began in wrath.”

The man then exchanged a horse with him and went with him on his next 8 appointments.

Orb of light

The book also gives the account of George Dougherty, a one-eyed, Methodist circuit preacher, whose intellect was called an “orb of light.”

Physically, he was described as “6 foot tall, with stooping shoulders, knees bending forward and a tottering walk, only one eye and smallpox scars on his face.”

A fellow preacher recorded his first-hand account of Dougherty at the 1806 National Methodist Conference.

“I saw a tall, gaunt, one-eyed man, in rather shabby dress, enter and walk up to the pulpit and to my astonishment, the awkward stranger went through all the motions to preach.

“Is it possible this fine congregation to be bored and mortified by this awkward, blundering backwoodsman? And in a few minutes, all heads bowed in disgust, raised their head when he preached his sermon and raised every head, and fixed every eye… rising higher and higher till he carried the congregation as it were by storm.”

It must have been one fiery sermon.

Francis Asbury assigned Dougherty to Charleston, where he was the victim of an angry mob attack.

He was grabbed and dragged to the well pump and almost drowned.

Martha Kugley, a Methodist supporter, pushed through the crowd, “took off her apron and stuffed it in the pump spout and commanded them to desist.”

Dougherty eventually died from an illness related to this incident.

A pastor’s job is hard enough, but in the good ol’ days, perhaps it was just more difficult.

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